a Sydney single’s face off with modern dating misery

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In a recent bid to go off the (dating) grid I decided to delete all my dating profiles to take a break, re-focus, and try to shake the jaded animosity the online dating world had drawn out of me.

It was around this time that I was also quite enjoying the trance music scene and had been added to a Facebook group that kept its members updated on the latest trance news and events. Someone had posted some video footage from an event I had attended and I ‘liked’ it, nek minnit the guy that had posted the video had sent me a private message on Facebook asking me out! Was Facebook the new Tinder?

Earlier that day I had been asked by a friend what I was looking for in a partner because she was going to see if any of her guy friends fit the bill. I came up with 5 things off the top of my head (in no particular order):

Tall

Good sense of humour

Able to carry a conversation

Stuff in common – I’d love to date someone into house/progressive/trance music

Likes to go out and be social, gigs, festivals etc. No homebodies.

I thought to myself, well this dude obviously ticks two of those boxes seeing as he was into the same music/festivals as I was, so I thought I’d give him a chance. Could you imagine if that’s all I had to do this whole time? Just write some shit down and the universe would hand it to me? Sound too good to be true??

We chatted over Facebook messenger for a while and I learned he was tall (tick!), 35 (age appropriate: tick!), studying law (brains: tick!), previously worked in IT (was made redundant and took the opportunity to go back to study) and owned a house on the Central Coast (shit together: tick!). Normally a potential match would be eliminated if I found out they lived that far away (Mordor), but seeing as he was constantly in Sydney due to study, I decided to roll with it. We messaged back and forth for hours, sending each other music tracks and just getting to know one another – he seemed normal enough. He promised to call me the following evening and we said goodnight.

Via kappit.com

I have mixed emotions regarding talking to guys on the phone. It stresses me out and I find it highly invasive – at least with a text you can read it and respond when you have the time, a phone call is so demanding and quite full-on if you don’t know the person very well. I don’t even phone my friends much, let alone speak to some stranger I met over Facebook! But then on the other hand, speaking to someone voice-on-voice can give you a better idea of the person they are so when the phone call came, I answered.

We actually got on really well, spoke for over an hour and he ‘got’ my sense of humour so I was feeling pretty optimistic about actually meeting this guy. Better yet he didn’t sound like a coastie bogan! Miracle!

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We texted over the next couple of days and during one conversation he revealed he had been previously engaged, and the reason the marriage didn’t go ahead was because his fiance died from Leukemia. CLASSIC OVERSHARE. Although I empathized with him, it was probably a little soon to be divulging this to someone you hadn’t even met yet… Nonetheless I was still willing to give it a shot.

Then he suggested we go to quite a lavish restaurant for our first date which I’m sure most girls would find incredibly romantic but that sort of arrangement is way too much in my opinion for a first meeting. Maybe for like the 3rd/4th date but for date #1 I wanted to do something more casual just in case (god forbid) I had to pull a Houdini. What if we didn’t get along and I was trapped on a 3-course date? Hell no.

We decided on lunch and drinks the following Sunday. Whilst deciding on a place he asked me if I’d seen 50 Shades of Grey (it had just come out at the movies) but I’d seen it immediately with my girlfriends and told him so. He was mildly upset because he thought we could’ve seen it together after lunch. I mused that it was an odd movie choice for a guy and that’s when he casually mentioned he “practices”. So what – I was dating Christian Grey now??

The clincher for me though was the message I received early on Valentine’s Day:

Via giphy.com

My reaction after getting that was actual horror. WHY did this guy think that this was OK? If the over-the-top first date, incessant texting and S&M hadn’t turned me off at this point, this ridiculous gesture on Valentine’s Day had sealed the deal. The date was off.

I thought I was blunt enough for him to take the hint but apparently not. He continued to text me sporadically for the next two months.

I’m not sure what dating game he’s familiar with but whatever it is it’s not from this world. And “easy going” must roughly translate to “casual stalker” surely? He even went to the lengths of filming his bird saying “Hello” over and over again to try and spark a response:

At least he hadn’t trained it to say “Hello Claudia” or “I love you” because then I probably would’ve alerted the police. From this moment forward he was referred to as “Bird Man”.

Even throwing the dead fiance in as a last ditch attempt of contact! Nooooo!! I don’t think I’ve ever experienced desperation level 861 but now I can safely say I have. Chalk that one up to the list! Maybe I’ll do a follow up text in a year’s time like this guy did: